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When he asks, what else can you say but yes?
To leave, to be free, like he said?
You’ve never been free before.
What else could you do, but follow?
You keep your ear to the ground. Listen in servant networks. Do some odd jobs.
Your role was specific in the Malort household. You were attendant, interpreter, memory. It is specific here, too. Manual labor, unglamorous. You do solitary work, because when you’re around, everyone’s hair, fur, and feathers stand on end. Something prickles in the back of their neck, a long buried instinct screaming danger.
You understand. When you look in the mirror, you see it too.
When did you let the lines start to blur? Which one of your messages was the tipping point? When did Absinthe Malort, heir to his family name, future lord of Thentia, see you?
Stones sit in your stomach. There was not a moment everything changed. Perhaps it was from the very beginning.
You don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Now he is without you. On his own. There will always be another Patter, another rain-on-the-roof, another friend-interpreter-servant-lover-something none of these things and yet more.
Except.
Of all the names you hear, even Kuda’s once or twice, his never appears. You catch snippets. Heir on a journey. Left the house. On her own. Stronger than she seems. World saving. Magical. New.
Her.
She?
He didn’t come back.
He didn’t come back?
You feel the body in your arms start to slacken. Absinthe’s eyes, his bright, blue, hopeful eyes, swollen and bruised, open to you.
You can hear yourself begging. Telling him to hold on. Anything. The world feels far away. He brings up his hand to rest on your face. You feel his cold fingertips play with your feathers.
He grimaces. It’s not much, a little quirk of a lip. You grasp his hand tightly to your chest, trying to warm his fingers.
“Please,” he manages, voice tense, “please know. Please-“ he coughs, “These were the best days of my life.”
“Absinthe-“ the voice you use is old and familiar. Your Hatcher’s, maybe? You’ve used it so much, it’s second nature to you now. You have long forgotten its origin.
“One….one day. You will have yours. Your…best days. Come…come tell me about it. No…no matter where I am, I’ll….make time. For you.”
“Absinthe!”
“Please.”
And gods above, he never asks for anything anymore. In all the things you’ve done in the past, you wish you could fail every order, every request, just to uphold this one.
“You’ll be with me,” you swear, tearing your face away from the tenderness held in his hand. “You’ll be there.”
Absinthe smiles.
“Love you,” he says, and he’s said it before, playfully, in gratitude, never like this. Never like it meant anything.
You feel his arm drop against your shoulder. His head tilts back. His eyes dim into an icey, unknowing blue.
Something shatters. The air sings in warning.
Then your world explodes.
You should have said no.
Magic, clawing up your throat, every nerve alight in agony. Terrible, awful, gripping, consuming.
You should have said no.
Is this what he felt like? Every spell another reminder, burning down his arms and in his eyes. Spilling over like tears. Unstable. Unwilling. Never his own. What you would pay for a limiter, a conduit, something to control this....this rageburningpassionfirefrostbitedespair-
Maybe it would have saved him.
You cast a spell on an attacker, one of many these days, and watch as their bones clatter to the ground, smooth and fleshless.
Maybe it would have saved you.
(It didn’t.)
You wake up.
You were laying in the ruins of what used to be a shack. The shack where you…tried to rescue Absinthe. Where this happened. Where he…
You find, around you, in the ruins, the skeletons of your captors. They’re clean, like something took them and sucked them of all their meat. The bones are scattered, like whoever it was left in a hurry. If this were the work of animals, why didn’t they hurt you?
Breathing in the dirty air, emerging from the rubble, a glimmer of something catches your eye.
Treading into a pile of ashes, you brush off the dust before picking the object up. In your hand is what seems to be shattered blue glass. Parts of them have posts—like these used to be someone’s earrings.
Cold realization slips down your spine. You know these earrings. You’ve seen them a thousand times. They were worn every day back in the Malort household.
When Absinthe used his magic, whether for entrances or training or just for a party trick, these earrings glowed a bright green in tandem with his circlet. They were gold, like him. Gilded, like him. All dressed up in the heraldry of his position, he was always seen with them.
However, even when he wasn’t using his magic, when he grimaced and winced in the dressing room and played along with all of the fussing, you always saw a spark in them. A sign of him. Playful and green and oh so beautiful.
Topaz, you remember him saying. His sister had given them to him when they were younger. She said there was a protection enchantment on them, for good luck.
Looking at these shattered gems, Patter, you notice something. They’re shiny, like jewels, yes. But they’re almost dull. There’s no spark anymore. No magic.
Just broken glass in your hands.
Despite your companion, it's a lovely morning. Kuda will ask you in a tone not dissimilar to her mother: “Did you love him? Were you two….happy?”
You don’t know if it was love. Love makes it sound like a fairy tale.
But...when the lights were too bright, he shielded you in his shadow. When he was lost, you swooped in and guided. His "Thank yous" left happy butterflies in your chest and made you feel untouchable.
When you left, it was with him. You had spent so much of your lives intertwined that living without him, was like wandering without a compass. Happiness was never a question. You just were.
Maybe that was love. Maybe it wasn’t. All you know is that your chest feels permanently cleaved in two, your heart wailing against your ribs with your most profound and deepest wish: the want to follow. The want to stay.
You don't know how to say that. There's no amount of words that can distill years into sentences, paragraphs for consumption, for judgement.
In front of his sister, you can only nod.
Kuda, angry, hurt, righteous Kuda, seems to swallow it whole. She smiles around it, trying to offer you sympathy, though it never reaches her eyes, her tusks gleaming in the sun. For a brief moment, her features blur, turn into someone else. Something else. An echo of filled ballrooms and false laughter. Smiles he never meant. Small touches, thank yous, your secret language of care.
She apprises you with her eyes. Takes in your clothes, the black stains on your cloak, your quickly fading feathers, the remnants of awful magic that chokes and clings and rests deep inside of you.
You don’t know what she sees, but her hands, when they touch your shoulder, are calloused, unlike his. They’re warm and light. She stares at your body like it will provide an answer, before slowly wrapping her arms around you. Allowing you time to move, to reject.
You stay still. Unmoving. Accepting. It's what she needs.
You need it, too.
“Thank you,” she whispers into your crest, breathy, close to tears.
You return the hug. When Kuda pulls back, she looks lighter. More assured. Before you part, she gives you her sending stone, tells you to call her anytime.
You don’t call.
She doesn’t either.
You bought a scroll. You saved. Worked. Killed. Dreamed.
True Resurrection. Kuda’s the heir now, it means you can be free. That he could be free. You have….a chance. Your story doesn’t have to end. You can have a happy ending. A life. Together. You would do all of this over a thousand times to see him smile again.
The spell fizzles out in the cave you cast it in. A waste. Of money. Time. Energy.
He didn’t come back. You knew this before.
He isn’t coming back, not even for you.
Something breaks. The air sings. There’s a heartbroken wail in a voice you’ve never heard before. The ground is cold beneath your knees, dirt beading beneath your hands, the magic you’ve kept at bay — his magic, twisted now, shoved into another, claws at your insides, screaming, spreading, unbidden, out of you.
There’s footsteps, then a hand in your view.
They greet you, say your name.
All the people who knew it, knew it truly, are long gone, far away from you. The last one to call you that, the last one to get close—
Well.
Kuda Malort is a kind girl, but she is naive. She doesn’t understand cruelty. Absinthe had told her your name's meaning, its true sound, and Kuda attempted to mimic.
She didn’t say your name. It was close. A bastardization of the tongue your hatcher once spoke. Her attempt was echoey, large, evoking thunderstorm, power.
You were hatched on the streets of Thentia in a storm, the moment your beak broke through, a tree branch, laden and heavy, let its droplets fall upon the roof above you. No drumming, no echo, gentle. Just a patter.
Your limbs locked up then, feeling for the first time in that great big house something akin to prey.
You felt, distantly, Absinthe's hand on your back as he ushered you away, citing some responsibility you had never heard of before. Kuda, for what it was worth, took it in stride.
She never tried again, and you didn’t know whether to be thankful or to grieve.
You knew then, as you knew when you left your nest, as you know now, when the next time your name was said would be.
Their eyes are kind, this wayfarer. Soulful. Sad.
They still offer their hand. The world bleeds into grey blue sky and yellow prairie. You are not where you were.
“Bring me back,” you say, Absinthe’s voice, not your own, “I wish to stay.”
Silence. Thought.
“What would you do,” they say, “to see him again?”
Their eyes speak of an understanding you cannot name.
The gravelly voice of someone fresh from screaming answers. It is not a voice you knew you could speak.
“Anything.”